Well Spring Break is now long gone and I'm back from Norway. It was SO much fun... I want to go back. Everything had art on it even a drainage ditch has swirling lines like water made of cement. The bridges had copper diver statues attached to their suspending lines. It was crazy!
We only had a day and a half there. The first day was clear and decently warm. I wore my coat unbuttoned. We decided on a quick lunch so we could see more of the city. We stopped at a small sandwich place along Johan's Gate (which is the main pedestrian street) and grabbed a bite. Man did we luck out! It was really good! Some kind of curry chicken with a green minced herb and garlic spread plus cucumber sauce! Little did we know, but Norwegians love sauces and gravies on everything! We then went and checked into the hotel. I would recommend it to anyone. They were like apartments and super nice and modern. MyCityHome was the name.
We walked around for hours and turns out we saw most of the sites along the coast... we know this because we looked at a flyer for a mini cruise, which is just a sightseeing ship, and we had seen nearly all of the things! We ended up spending too much time just wandering around and it was like 9 before we even started looking for a place to eat dinner. We decided on an Indian restaurant. Note: Norway is known for other people's food. They have all sorts of International restaurants. The Indian food was amazing. Stefano said it was the best he'd had.... for me as well, although I'm sure he's had it a lot more than me!
The next day the weather was miserable but we braved it anyway. We went to the Viking museum. I went to one when I spent the summer in Denmark, but this one has better preserved ships. That was pretty cool. We then decided to have lunch at a place we found in one of the guide books... it was the only meal was merely okay. Stupid guide books. We then tried to find this park with sculptures of people... well we found a fun bar instead and had some sort of Norwegian liquor that gets shipped down to the equator and back in oak barrels before its served. It was really good. We then found a place for dinner and had reindeer burgers!! Reindeer is a customary food in Norway. It was delicious. We went to the restaurant before the park because the bartender didn't know if they were still serving food, I guess Norwegians also eat early, so we decided to test our luck. THEN we made our way to the creepiest park ever. There was no one around and these sculptures were all naked people! Some were erotic and some were of children. In the center there was a tower of people piled on each other. I got freaked out and wanted to leave so we did. This is like 12 or 1 in the morning and it turns out there are no night buses or subways at night on the weekdays. We hopped a cab and went back to the hotel to sleep for an hour before we had to get up to catch our 4 oclock bus to the airport.
AFTER all of this and napping on the plane we decided to go skiing for a half day so I could say I've been skiing in the Italian alps... which are called the Dolomites or Dolomiti. The weather turned out to be bad... I'm talking like blizzard can't see in front of you bad so we just went down three slopes. The first one I was good. I did way better than Stefano... Then something happened. He got really good and I fell like 6 times! Ugh. Anyway, it was a blast. We tried to go to this nice restaurant he's been telling me about where the snow mobile picks you up from designated parking and pulls you to the restaurant. Then after you eat you sled back down the mountain!! I wanted to go so bad but his car wouldn't make it up the hills required to get there. SO we had this pizza he has been talking about.... yeah a lot of my conversations revolve around food. lol. It was yummy although it wasnt sledding down a mountain yummy. Oh well.
After that I spent a night in Asolo before heading to Padova to meet a friend. Padova is known for being a university town, but it seemed pretty dead when we got there. We walked around forever and found some measly restaurant for lunch. Well a few hours later the streets were packed! I guess everyone was off having a better lunch then us outside of the center. haha.
Easter morning we went to San Antonio's Basilica. There was supposed to be a cantata service, but I guess we got our times wrong, so we listened to the entire service in Italian. It was nice to go to church on Easter though, even if it was with someone else's mom. Family is family. We had a good lunch then headed back to Asolo. The rest of the time was spent doing schoolwork. Happy day. Well that was my break!
It was awesome! but now I must go prepare for a presentation. Ciao!
